


Best Laid Plans

by Fanforthefics (StormDancer)



Series: Hockey Tumblr Oneshots [8]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fuckbuddies, M/M, Pining, Utter ridiculousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 09:38:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13995519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormDancer/pseuds/Fanforthefics
Summary: I love you as a thank you: or, Jamie goes to the Friends playbook





	Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know, guys. 
> 
> For the prompt: "I love you as a thank you" Reposted from tumblr, so not betaed. Don't know, don't own, entirely fictionalized versions with nothing to do with the actual people, etc. Enjoy!

It starts because Jamie’s an idiot. If you asked many people—namely, his brother—that probably wouldn’t be a surprise, but at this point even Jamie’s surprised at the depths of idiocy to which he can sink.

He’s just—they’re hanging out at Tyler’s house, and after they fucked they’d had a good dinner, which Jamie mostly cooked so Tyler had insisted on cleaning up. So now Jamie’s in the living room, with three dogs piled on top of him, and he’s lazy and comfortable with good food and beer and the simple pleasure of spending this much time with Tyler. It feels like the older they get, the less they get this stuff—they’ve both got their own friends now, and they’re busy with their own stuff, and that’s good, Jamie knows, but he still sort of misses those days when Tyler had first come to Dallas and they’d been joined at the hip. He’s not complaining about the regular buddies sex, that’ll never not be hot, but having this is nice too.

“Hey, thought you might want this,” Tyler says, and hands Jamie a beer as he walks past him to sit on the other side of the couch.

Jamie takes the beer, and he’s warm and comfortable and only half-paying attention, so, “Love you,” he says as thanks, before he thinks about it.

And then he freezes. They’ve been so good for so long. Fuor fucking years, three of them spent fucking on and off, and Jamie had been so good—and now this.

Tyler barely blinks, just grins. “That’s because you’re easy,” he retorts, and collapses onto the couch. “Also, you’re high on puppy cuddles.”

“You’re the easy one,” Jamie shoots back. “And your dogs just like me better.”

“Lies!” Tyler cries, and reaches out to pet Gerry. “I’m their favorite.”

“That’s not what I’m seeing,” Jamie holds out his arms to better demonstrate the three dogs on him.

“Just because you’re a great cuddler doesn’t mean you’re their favorite,” Tyler retorts, and it all goes downhill from there.

Jamie almost forgets about it until he leaves. But as soon as he’s out of the house—away from Tyler and the magic way he seems to make Jamie stop freaking out about how much of an idiot he is, and also the magic of how his kisses sometimes make Jamie feel drugged—he can’t stop thinking about it.

How stupid was he? Sure, Tyler didn’t make a big deal about it, but Tyler can be subtler than people give him credit for, and he’s definitely not one to make things awkward if they don’t have to be.

Jamie manages to get home before he starts hitting his head against a wall, but only just. He’d spent so long trying not to make Tyler uncomfortable and dealing with his shit himself, and then—this. He’s an idiot.

But not an irredeemable one. Jamie nods to himself. He can fix this. He just has to make Tyler think that it’s normal. He can do that.

Once he has a plan, Jamie feels better, and manages to finally get to sleep.

///

“Hey, here you go.” Jamie juggles the gear he’s carrying around until he sees who’s holding the door to the locker open. It’s Shoresy, which Jamie’s a little grateful for. He’s solid. He won’t overthink it.

“Thanks,” Jamie says, going through. Everyone’s there after practice, including Tyler, who’s sitting close enough to the door that he’ll be able to hear. “I love you.”

The people nearest the door—Tyler included—look up, as Shoresy gives Jamie a confused look. “Um. You’re welcome? I love you too?”

Jamie pats Shoresy on the shoulder idly, and keeps going to dump his gear at his stall. He manages to grab a look at Tyler out of the side of eye—Tyler’s still taping his stick. He didn’t seem to notice anything off. Good.

///

Jamie lingers after practice. He’s been having a bit of a slump—not a big one, just enough to get him on edge—and he still doesn’t feel like he’s worked it off. The rest of the guys are all heading off, and Tyler’s circling like he does when he’s going to come up to Jamie and invite him over, but Jamie’s not quite ready to go yet. He wouldn’t be a good fuck, wound up like this.  

Kari skates up next to him. “Want me to stick around?” he asks. “Run some shooting drills?”

Jamie smiles at him, grateful. “That’d be great,” he says. Then remembers. “I love you.”

Kari nods, like that’s his due. Goalies. “I’ll get in net,” he says. “You see if Tyler’s staying too.”

That makes Jamie turn—and Tyler’s right next to him. He’s got his head tilted to the side, and he’s watching Jamie like he’s an interesting sort of bug.

Then he shakes his head, and skates up close, close as they’d be in a celly. “Coming over after?” he purrs, and Jamie swallows. He’ll never get over that look.

“Yeah,” he agrees easily. “I’m just going to run some drills with Kari first.”

Tyler pauses, then. “I’ll be waiting.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively, salutes, and skates backwards off the ice.

///

“Skittles?” Klinger’s wandering up the aisle of the plane, holding out a bag of Skittles.

“Are you our new flight attendant?” Tyler jokes, reaching over Rads to get to the bag. He takes a handful, and shoves them all into his face at once. Jamie really wishes he found that less attractive. Tyler, who knows Jamie too well, winks at him.

“Yes, you demoted, not pretty enough,” Klinger shoots back. He holds the bag out to Jamie. “Skittles?”

“Sure.” Jamie takes a handful. “I love you.”

It is very obvious on Klinger’s pale skin how red he goes. “Thank you,” he mutters, and keeps going.

Spezza leans over from the seat in front of Tyler and Rads. “You’re going to break his heart, if you keep up with this.”

Jamie shrugs, trying not to blush himself.

“Don’t flatter him,” Tyler puts in, grinning. He turns to Jamie, and something glints in his gaze. “Benny wouldn’t know how to break a heart if it killed him.”  

“Thanks?” Jamie tries. The words were a compliment, but Tyler didn’t deliver them like it.

“You’re welcome,” Tyler replies, and settles back in his seat.

///

The bar is louder than Jamie’s used to, but one of the younger guys must have picked it out, and Jamie doesn’t mind it once and a while. It’s nice, to celebrate a solid win in a bar like this, knowing the single guys are out there having fun and everyone who doesn’t want to deal with it can chill in a booth.

Jamie’s solidly in the second camp most days, and nowadays Tyler bounces between. Once, that might have gotten to Jamie, but he’s learned how to handle his shit in the last few years. Just because they have sex—really great sex—occasionally doesn’t mean he has any sort of claim on Tyler. He knows Tyler still picks up sometimes, at places like this, and that’s his right. Jamie can deal with his own stupid feelings on his own. Sometimes it makes him wish Jordie was still here, because at least that was a sympathetic ear to whine to even if Jordie would mock him incessantly, but it was someone.

Still, Jamie’s an adult. He can handle his feelings. And it’s nice, to go out with his team.

“Okay, this round on me,” Rous announces, when he gets back to the table. He hands out the drinks, around the table. Tyler drops into a spot next to Jamie just in time to snag one—he’s hot and a little sweaty, and his eyes are lit up with adrenaline. He looks a little like he did on the ice when he scored, in a way that goes somehow both to Jamie’s dick and his heart.

“And one for the captain,” Rous finishes, handing off the last to Jamie.

Jamie toasts him. Tyler’s warm next to him, and he’d been dancing with a hot girl earlier, grinding and murmuring in her ear. Jamie is fine. “I love you.”

Tyler’s close enough to Jamie that he can feel Tyler twitch. Had Jamie overplayed his hand?

But Tyler just picks up his beer and chugs half of it. “I’m going to dance,” he announces, standing back up.

“Have fun,” Spezza waves, and Tyler flips him off and goes off. Jamie watches him, a little worried. That had been a little more manic than usual, shades of Tyler as he’d first been in Dallas.

But he seems alright, finding the other guys who are dancing right away, and Jamie turns back to his conversation with Rads about the Olympics.

He gets up a little while later to go to the bathroom. When he comes out, he barely gets the door open before he’s being shoved against it, and Tyler’s pinning him to the door with his thigh between Jamie’s legs and his mouth on Jamie’s, hot and insistent.

“Tyler?” Jamie gets out, between Tyler’s fierce, drugging kisses. “What—”

“Shut up,” Tyler demands, kissing him again. He gives up on Jamie’s mouth, trails his lips down his neck, his collarbone, nipping like he’d like to leave a mark. Jamie groans just to think about it. About Tyler leaving a mark. About Tyler wanting to. “Shut up, just shut up shut up shut up.”

Jamie drags them back into the bathroom, and shuts up.

///

Jamie half listens to all the interviews, because he likes to think as little as possible about his own and also its good to know what the guys are saying. It means he hears Spezza talk about his assist a little, and hears the praise he has for Jamie. Jamie grins into his stall as he pulls his shirt on. There aren’t many people whose opinion he trusts more than Jason’s.

“Hey,” he says, when Spezza’s done. “Thanks for that.” Tyler’s getting changed in the next stall over; Spezza raises his eyebrows, and Jamie finishes. “I love you.”

“Just the truth.” But then Spezza leans over, settles against the division between his stall, and folds his arms across his chest. He talks quietly, though almost everyone has left by now. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“About the game?”

“About your new…thing.” Jason’s gaze is even. Behind him, Jamie can see Tyler slow his buttoning up his shirt. “I know it’s been tough for you, without Jordie. If you ever need anything, you know I’m here, right?”

“What? No.” Jamie reaches up a hand to tug at his hair. “I mean—I’m fine. But thanks.”

“As long as you know.” Spezza nods. He still looks so serious, but caring. “I know we aren’t your family, but we all love you too, Benny.”

Luckily he doesn’t seem to expect Jamie to reply to that; he just nods and walks away. Jamie watches him.

“Do you ever feel like you’ve just been stealth dadded?” he asks Tyler, a little blankly.

Tyler laughs, and throws an arm over Jamie’s shoulder. “All the time. Sometimes by you.”

Jamie glares at him. “That’s gross.”

Tyler smirks up at him. “Is it?”

“Yes,” Jamie insists, and shoves Tyler away.

“But Daddy!” Tyler tries to whine, but ruins it because he can’t stop laughing, probably at the look on Jamie’s face.

///

“First star!” Someone calls, when Rads comes into the locker room. Rads sweeps into a flamboyant bow, nearly taking off Ben’s head. “Congrats!”

“Thank you!” Rads calls back, and sweeps over to his stall. Instead of taking his stuff off, though, he pauses in front of Jamie. “I not get thank you, for winning game?”

Jamie snorts. “Thank you, Raddy.”

Rads’ pout is frankly ridiculous on a grown man. “That all I get? No love for me?”

Jamie’s laughing too. It’s easy, after a win. “I love you,” he says, and then doesn’t brace fast enough for Rads to grab Jamie’s face and smash his lips to Jamie’s.

Jamie comes up sputtering, to the cheers of the whole locker room.

“Get some!” someone calls, and,

“Is that what we get for game winners now?”

Rads smacks Jamie’s cheeks cheerfully. “I love you too, captain!” he announces, and gives Jamie one final grin before making his way to his stall.

Jamie turns to Tyler to share amused looks about their linemate, but Tyler’s not laughing. He’s maybe the only one not laughing. Instead, he’s looking at Jamie with steel in his gaze.

“Seggy?” Jamie tries. Tyler’s lips curl into one of the fakest smiles Jamie’s ever seen.

“Trading out linemates?” he says, and the inflection is a joke but the tone is sharp and biting.

It gets Jamie’s back up. He’s been not making this weird. Tyler doesn’t get to make this weird. “Talk to me when you get first star,” Jamie replies evenly, and turns away to finish getting dressed.

He and Tyler have generally been ending up at each other’s places or hotel rooms after games recently, especially wins, but today Jamie doesn’t expect it and doesn’t really want it. He’d been in a good mood. He didn’t need Tyler to kill it.

So he goes to his hotel room, changes into sweats and turns on the TV. Some of the guys are talking about going out, but not until later. He has time to chill—checks some scores, texts Jordie because Jordie’s apparently heard about his new thing and needs to chirp him about it.

He’s not surprised by the pounding on the door, really. He knows Tyler pretty well. And they need to play together tomorrow, so not talking about it isn’t going to help, as nice as that sounds.

Instead, he gets up and yanks the door open.

“What?” He demands.

Tyler shoves past him. He’s changed too, into low-hanging sweatpants and a tanktop that shows off all of his tattoo. In another mood, Jamie would want to trace all of those lines with his tongue. Even in this mood, he sort of wants to.

“Look, I get it, okay?” Tyler spits out, as soon as Jamie shuts the door behind him. “You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

“About what?”

“About—” Tyler waves a hand. “Message received. Loud and clear.”

“Message.”

“You’re not subtle.” Tyler scowls, and crosses his arms. “I thought it was some weird superstition, but—I get you didn’t mean it when you told me, okay? You don’t have to do all this shit to make me believe it. Trust me. I believe it.”

Jamie’s still not sure what Tyler’s so mad about. His strategy worked. It wasn’t supposed to make Tyler mad. “I—”

“It’s just a shitty thing,” Tyler goes on, stabbing a finger at Jamie. “Like, I know you don’t love me, that we’re just—fuckbuddies, or whatever. That I’m not the guy you fall in love with. But you don’t have to rub it in.”

Jamie blinks. He’s not that much of an idiot, is he?

“Tyler,” he says. “Are you mad because I said it, or because I’ve been saying it to everyone else.”

Tyler meets his gaze, wild-eyed. “Don’t make me answer that.”

Apparently, Jamie is that much of an idiot. He’s never telling his brother. “Tyler, I love you.”

“Yeah, I know, we’re teammates, you love all of us. Shockingly, that doesn’t make me—”

“Tyler,” Jamie cuts him off, and grabs his arms for good measure. Tyler goes still. “I love you.”

He can see the second it hits Tyler. Can see him blink, and can hear his intake of breath.

“I didn’t do anything for you to thank me for, just there.”

“No.”

“Why’d you go through all this shit, then?” Tyler demands, but his hands are sneaking up Jamie’s arms, over his biceps.

Jamie goes a little red. “I thought you wouldn’t want to hear it, so I was trying to make you think it was a thing I was doing.”

Tyler snorts. “That’s a really stupid plan.”

“Seems to have worked out,” Jamie points out, letting go of Tyler’s arms so he can run his hands down to his hips.

“Yeah, but just because I’m a jealous idiot. Imagine if I hadn’t been. You’d have been telling Rads you loved him for the rest of your career. What would you have said to Hitchcock? Would you—”

“Segs,” Jamie cuts him off, trying and failing at not laughing in the face of Tyler’s blinding grin. “I’m really glad you’re an idiot.”

Tyler laughs, and gets his hands in Jamie’s hair. “I’m glad you’re an idiot too,” he says. Then pauses, when their lips are almost touching. “Thanks,” he adds, with a shit-eating grin.   
I love you.”

“Shut up,” Jamie groans, and kisses him to make sure he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Liked it? Want to talk about it? Comment or come chat on [ tumblr!](http://fanforthefics.tumblr.com/)


End file.
